From the time of Caesar’s veterans’ bureau — the Aerarium
Militare — politicians have struggled to
realize what Lincoln came to pledge: "to care
for him who shall have borne the battle and for his
widow and his orphan(.)"

Or as Kipling said in answer to Tennyson’s
paean to one of England’s military blunders:
Whose shall be "the charge of" the surviving "twenty
broken troopers," "the last of the Light
Brigade"?

Right now Oregon lawyers can get in at
the start of a whole new means of assisting veterans
with their claims before the federal Veterans Administration.
Oregon has a tradition of leadership in veterans’ services.
It starts no later than the 1932 Bonus March, when
around 45,000 World War I veterans converged on Washington,
D.C. They came to demand immediate payment on the deferred-compensation
bonds issued for their military service, rather than
having to wait until the bonds matured in 1945.

Black and white veterans marched and
bivouacked together. They created what certainly was
the most racially integrated place in the nation (and
which integration served as fodder for detractors’ spurious
claims that the Bonus March was led by Communists).
Four years after their march, the veterans got their
compensation. In the process they laid the foundation
for later passage of the G.I. Bill of Rights, which
helped create America’s middle class.

Veterans’ advocates know about
the Bonus March, but they may not know about its Oregon
connection. The march started from Portland, where
it was conceived by an Oregonian, Walter W. Waters.

But the Bonus March shows that politically,
veterans’ services are not entitlements; instead,
they’re a subject of political will. For example,
consider the last Congress’s initial decision
against fully funding the Defense and Veterans Brain
Injury Center. When Congress first faced the choice
between funding its "earmarks" and funding
the center, the center lost.

And cost isn’t the sole reason
veterans’ services face political opposition.
There’s also the problem with generalizing sacrifice.
As veterans’ advocate Julian Camp explained,
when the public has to ante up for the full costs of
veterans’ services, "the war comes home,
to everyone."

But veterans soon will find that when
it comes to getting VA services, lawyers can be their
ally — more than ever before. For many years
federal law essentially barred lawyers from representing
veterans before the VA. In 1862, Congress barred lawyers
from charging veterans a fee of greater than five dollars.
In 1864, Congress raised the limit to ten dollars.
It stayed there until 1988, when Congress generally
barred attorney fees altogether.

That was the law until recently. Led
by a group of senators, including Willamette law alumnae
Lisa Murkowski, the last Congress passed S.3421. The
bill should take full effect this May or June. Under
it, lawyers generally will be allowed to charge fees
for representing veterans before the VA. As explained
by the Paralyzed Veterans of America, the legislation "will
be good for veterans as well as (the) VA, which received
nearly 1 million claims last year. The availability
of more trained advocates is sure to benefit veterans
overall."

The bill was long overdue for Oregon’s
veterans. As of Jan. 20, 2007, the VA’s Portland
office was facing 9,426 compensation and pension claims,
28.5 percent of which had been pending for more than
six months. The claims will swell when, for example,
Gen. Pritt’s 41st Brigade rotates home from Afghanistan.
Although the service officers employed by the state,
counties, tribes and veterans’ services organizations
provide a great help, there just aren’t enough
of them to go around.

But thanks to S.3421, veterans won’t
have to rely so exclusively on service officers. Instead,
they’ll be able to do what anyone else can do
who has a claim for government benefits — hire
a lawyer.

The problem is that at best there are
only a handful of lawyers in Oregon capable of practicing
veterans’ law. Many more lawyers are needed,
but they’ll need training. The most logical group
to organize and provide that training may be the Oregon
State Bar. If you’re interested in practicing
veterans’ law, and would like the bar to sponsor
a veterans’ law CLE, please state your interest
in an email to veteranscle@osbar.org.

In the meantime, we should remember the
words of Lincoln and Kipling, and Vietnam veteran Steve
Hassna’s plea in his poem "#68": "Think
hard, America, for the fact is I am your only son."

ABOUT THE AUTHORJesse Wm. Barton is a Salem attorney and a member of
the OSB Special Committee on Military Assistance.